Something whizzed past my head and I brushed at my ear, thinking it was some night-flying insect. Both sentries swung around to face the outer darkness and raised their shields to just below eye level. They did this so perfunctorily, seeming bored by yet another military chore, that at first its significance escaped me.
“That was an arrow, Patron,” Burrus informed me. “You’d best duck below the palisade or get behind us, seeing as you’re not carrying a shield.” Even as he said it I heard an arrow thunk solidly into the chest-high wood of the palisade. From the gloom outside the camp came the sound of Gauls hooting and shouting.
I edged behind them. “I’m going to have a few words with Carbo,” I said. “He was supposed to stop this sort of thing.” I was appalled at how badly my military instincts had eroded. In a Roman alley I could sense danger coming from any direction. Here, it seemed I was as helpless as a tribune on his first day of service.
“Not much chance of that,” Quadratus said. “These Gauls get around in the dark like bats.” A slingstone smacked off the hide-sheathed wood of his shield with a crack that rang in my ears.
“Shouldn’t we raise the alarm?” I asked, embarrassed that I, an officer, had to solicit advice from a couple of common legionaries.
“It will have to get a lot worse than this,” Burrus told me. “We don’t wake the whole camp for a few arrows and stones. The barbarians aren’t even very close, or we’d have been catching javelins by now.”
“It’s what the Gauls want, you see,” Quadratus added. “It’s to keep us on edge and wakeful. The less sleep we get, the worse shape we’ll be in on the day we fight them in force, in the open.” Another stone clanged loudly off the bronze-sheathed rim of his shield. He felt for damage. “Damn! Put a dent in it. No, Captain, we only raise the alarm if they make an assault on the camp, and they can’t get past the rampart in big enough numbers for that, so it’s just this petty harassment every night.”
“At least it’s every third night for you two,” I said.
“Don’t we wish,” Burrus said. “Vinius said he found leather mold on our tent this morning. We stand sentry every night until he tells us otherwise.”
“After a full duty day?” A stone hurtled over my head, making a sound like a large bee hurrying to a distant flower. “I’ll speak to Caesar about this.”
“Don’t bother,” Burrus advised. “He’ll just back his First Spear and you’ll only annoy both of them.”
“He’s right, sir,” Quadratus affirmed. “Vinius can deal with just about any staff officer he doesn’t like. You’d best stay out of it.”
“We’ll see. I have to finish my rounds. I’ll see you men again before daylight.”
“Bring your shield next time, Patron,” Burrus said, chuckling. How a man in his position could see humor in anything was mystifying, but I was impressed enough to overlook his little insolence.
An officer is never supposed to show fear before the ranks, so I waited until I was out of their sight before I ducked under the protection of the palisade and made my way to the next sentry post in a ludicrous, bent-kneed crouch. I straightened again only when I came in sight of the next pair and resumed my fearless swagger.
All along the north wall the sentries were answering the Gauls’ windy war cries and challenges with the many rude noises of which Italians are the world’s masters. Darkness and their equipment deprived them of the eloquent gestures that everyone born south of the Po considers to be a part of the national arsenal.
It was with great relief that I concluded my inspection of the north wall and worked my way down the west wall, where enemy action was far less intense, and then to the south wall where all was quiet once more. At the main gate I descended into the camp and walked up the Via Praetoria to its intersection with the Via Principalis where the main watchfire burned. It was there that the guard relief gathered and there that I found a slave tending the water clock that timed the reliefs.
“How long until the next relief?” I asked the slave, a grayhaired man whose long service with the legion had earned him this cushy if somewhat sleep-deprived duty.
“Two hours, sir. They stand four on, four off in this legion. First night watch goes on an hour before sunset, the last is relieved an hour after sunrise.”
I looked at the water clock. It was a clever Greek contraption like an ornate bronze bucket filled with water. There was a hollow float in the water, which drained out through a small tube in the bottom. As it descended, the float tripped a lever at hourly intervals, and each time the lever would drop a bronze ball into a shallow dish of the same metal, producing a loud clang. I had seen the gigantic one in Alexandria, which produces a noise so loud you can hear it all over the city. I could never figure out why, since Alexandrians never pay any attention to what time it is.
“What do you do in winter, when it freezes?” I asked.
“Move it closer to the watchfire, so it doesn’t freeze. If the wind’s blowing hard and it freezes anyway, you watch the stars. If it’s cloudy, you just guess.”
“That must make for some hard feelings,” I mused. “Every man is sure to think he stood a longer watch than the other reliefs.”
The slave nodded. “Winter’s a bad time this far north, that’s for sure.”
I went to my tent, where I found Hermes dutifully tending the lamps. He handed me a flask. His arms and shoulders seemed to be recovering, since he could raise the flask waist-high. Its warmth felt good to my chilled hands.
“It’s that awful vinegar stuff the soldiers drink,” he said apologetically, “but it’ll sure wake you up.” I took a drink and he was courteous enough to wait for my eyes to stop watering before he asked me the inevitable question: “Are those barbarians making all that noise outside?” My tent was close enough to the north wall to hear them clearly.
“It certainly isn’t reinforcements from Rome. But don’t worry, they’re just entertaining us tonight.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll worry anyway.” Then he lowered his voice, although he was already speaking in low tones for Hermes. “We’re really in the middle of it, aren’t we? I’ve heard the soldiers talking and they say we’re unsupported in the middle of barbarian territory and it’s only a matter of time before about a million of them come down on us all at once.”
My face must have been as sour as the posca as I nodded. “It’s true, and that’s not the worst of it. I think there’s a man in the camp as dangerous to us as anything outside.”
“How do you always find people like that?” Hermes asked.
“The gods are not without a sense of humor. This is their little joke on me.”
“Then they’re laughing hard up on Olympus tonight,” He said. “They’ve matched you up with the meanest crucifier in the legion.”
To a slave, “crucifier” is the most powerful epithet of fear and opprobrium. Hermes also had the slave’s facility for keeping his ears open while the free men all around ignored him and talked as if he wasn’t there. My peers often upbraided me for listening to slave talk, but it saved my life a good many times.
“More soldier gossip?”
“It’s all over the camp. Next to the barbarians, the First Spear and his German woman are the favorite subjects around here. Everyone’s talking about how Vinius and the new officer are going at it shield to shield.”
“Poor Caesar,” I said. “He’s used to everyone talking about him. Are bets being laid?”
He shook his head. “No. Everyone says you’ll be squashed like a bug.”
I took another drink of Posca and choked it down. “It’s going to get worse very quickly. I want you to ask around tomorrow, see if you can get odds on me to win.”
He looked at me pityingly. “You don’t expect me to bet any of my money, do you?”
“You’re a slave. You’re not supposed to own money. Have you been stealing from me again?” By law, slaves are not supposed to own property, but the gulf between law and reality is as wide as that between Hades and Olympus. Actually, Hermes rarely stole from me, but it did him good to know he was under suspicion at all times.